grew symmetrical avenues of straight trees, abundant in their
leaves and branches, which filled them quite up. The gates seem
monumental works of art, and picturesque to a degree; while over the
walls--and what noble specimens of brickwork, or tiling rather, are
these old Vauban walls!--peep with curious mystery the upper stories
and roofs of houses with an air of smiling security. I catch a glimpse
of the elegant belfry, the embroidered spires, and mosque-like
cupolas, all a little rusted, yet cheerful-looking. Dickens's _place_,
or two _places_ rather--for there is the greater and the less--display
to us a really lovely town-hall in the centre, the roof dotted over
with rows of windows, while an airy lace-work spire, with a ducal
crown as the finish, rises lightly. On to its sides are encrusted
other buildings of Renaissance order, while behind is a mansion still
more astonishingly embroidered in sculptured stone, with a colonnade
of vast extent. Around the _place_ itself stretches a vast number of
Spanish mansions, with the usual charmingly 'escalloped' roof, all
resting on a prolonged colonnade or piazza, strange, old-fashioned,
and original, running round to a vast extent, which the sensible town
has decreed is never to be interfered with. A more pleasing,
refreshing, and novel collection of objects for the ordinary traveller
of artistic taste to see without trouble or expense, it would be
impossible to conceive. Yet everyone hurries by to see the somewhat
stale glories of Ghent and Brussels.

[Illustration: ARRAS.]

There was a general fat contented air of _bourgeois_ comfort about the
sleepy old-fashioned, handsome Prefecture--in short, a capital
background for the old provincial life as described by Balzac. But the
_place_, with its inimitable Spanish houses and colonnades--under
which you can shop--and that most elegant of spires, sister to that of
Antwerp, which it recalls, will never pass from the memory. A
beautiful object of this kind, thus seen, is surely a present, and a
valuable one too.

A spire is often the expression of the whole town. How much is
suggested by the well-known, familiar cathedral spire at Antwerp, as,
of some fresh morning, we come winding up the tortuous Scheldt, the
sad, low-lying plains and boulders lying on either hand, monotonous
and dispiriting, yet novel in their way; the cream-coloured,
lace-worked spire rising ever before us in all its elegant grace,
pointing the way, growi